"As part of Cherry Red's 30th anniversary commemorations, we shall be revisiting many key artist's releases and they will be remastered, re-pressed and re-promoted. Following on from our successful Eyeless In Gaza re-promotion, we are now delighted to re-press two solo Martyn Bates albums that were originally released in 1982 and 1987, respectively (CD issue was originally from 1996). If you are not familiar with these albums, then you are in for a positive treat! Martyn is an artist who has expressed his evolving vision over a period of more than 25 years. He has no time for any concept of musical purity and instead seems to bend and adapt it to become part of his wider notion of folk arts. His is a true evolution of traditional creative arts, providing signposts for our reintegration with the landscape and nature. Martyn spends his time creating music that is music which brings together our past with the present, expressing his hope for change through the bringing together of art, nature and humanity."

This is a long awaited Martyn Bates best-of collection, sampling a wide selection of his solo and collaborative work from 1979 to 2006. UK-based Martyn Bates founded the post-punk duo Eyeless in Gaza in 1980, along with Peter Becker. During his 20+ year career, after countless releases and against all odds, Bates managed to shape a unique, instantly recognizable form of music based on a deeply rooted, 100% English folk tradition. Often underrated as a songwriter, in his solo work and in EIG, he has developed what can be called an almost Elizabethan style: a combination of angst (a working-class hero) and pure melancholia (time irremediably lost, the loss of idealized love), mixed in with an unconditional love of poetry (Keats, Yeats, Joyce) and authentic popular song stylings. In addition, he possesses one of the most strangely compelling voices imaginable. Your Jewled Footsteps journeys through made-in-England pop, folk, poetry recitation and reconstructions of songs whose origins are long forgotten. In addition to Bates' essential pieces, the collection also includes several previously unreleased tracks, including some pre-industrial sound works predating EIG's formation, in the late '70s.

"This is the first full issue of the latest Martyn Bates album, it was originally issued in 1997 to accompany the similarly titled book of lyrics. Primarily a collection of songs occasionally threaded through with fleeting illustrative atmospheric sketches. A music brightly bittersweet, conjuring up ghostly and vivid invocations of folk." Pleasant folk-based material from the founder of Eyeless In Gaza; Bates on: songs, voices, banjo, autoharp percussion, pump organ, whistles and colourings.